Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan have published their quarterly customer satisfaction index for the 2nd quarter of 2008. According to the index Google is the best company in the web site category as far as customer satisfaction is concerned. Google has scored 86 points out of 100 against Yahoo’s 77 (slipped by 3 points) and MSN’s 75 (remained unchanged from last year).
What’s interesting here is that Google has soared 10% in 2008 from what it ranked in 2007. Its score of 86 is also the highest for any service company in all of ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index).
Yahoo made a promising start but than ended up loosing 3% to 77, which in part was a result of distractions caused by merger and acquisition overtures by Microsoft. In addition to this Yahoo also saw some of its main managers leaving the company which definitely had an effect on the company’s performance.
AOL’s performance was disappointing at 69, a score that is 17 points behind Google and 8 points behind closest rival Yahoo.
Although Google does experience regular outages, but the reason for Google higher rankings were well put by the report:
The increase in overall e-business satisfaction is driven largely by a remarkable jump by Google, but tough economic conditions may be contributing to greater satisfaction with the sector. In an environment where dollars are tight and gas is $4 a gallon, consumers derive great satisfaction from services that don’t require them to spend money or get in their car.
